


The Mystery of John

by Lumelle



Series: Questions and Answers [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexual!Sherlock, M/M, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-19
Updated: 2012-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-02 04:51:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumelle/pseuds/Lumelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can't focus and he can't think. He needs John here, except John isn't here, and that is the problem. Sherlock tries to figure out the hardest mystery in his life, along with his own feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mystery of John

**Author's Note:**

> Written pre-Reichenbach, and thus ignores it.

The tea cup shatters against the wall when Sherlock loses his train of thought for the third time in the last half an hour. Some remains of what used to be inside the now quite unreliable container drip down the wall, sparkle on the floor in droplets of a fairly interesting spatter distribution if he were to pay attention. Sherlock doesn't, he doesn't pay attention and he doesn't care and sod the bloody tea for now. It had long since faded to what he supposed should have been called cold but was really just room temperature, anyway.

He wants more tea, warm and freshly made and just strong enough to wake up his brain, but what he really wants is for John to make it for him so Sherlock can watch. John is quite particular about his tea, like a scientist conducting an experiment except John would never experiment with tea, he sticks to what he knows and does it with the meticulous preciseness of one who doesn't like surprises with what he has in his cup.

Dull. Boring. Uninteresting. So very comforting, though, and so very much like John.

John isn't here to make him tea, though, or to turn on the television to some dull programme that entirely fails to catch Sherlock's interest, or to attempt a conversation or fill the silence with the tapping of his laptop keys or invade Sherlock's thoughts and mind and logic like no one else ever has.

No, that's not entirely true. John may not be here in physical form but he's certainly present, intrusive, worming his way into Sherlock's mind in the most confounding of ways. Just like he always does. Always.

Nothing is like always, though, there is no always because every moment is changing and mutating and really the whole word is almost meaningless except where it describes the utter and mundane predictability of most little people in their little rat race. Except John is never like that, John never fails to surprise him in ways he cannot predict, to keep him getting out of the bed most days because maybe, just maybe, John will find him something new about the world to look at.

His thoughts are wandering again, and frustration keeps building within him, filling his senses, his mind, his thoughts. He should be focusing on the case, should be tracking down clues and putting them together into the bigger picture to solve the mystery but damn it he cannot concentrate. Sherlock needs John here, needs his ever loyal blogger to bounce ideas off of. Sometimes he almost wonders what he did before he had John, and he certainly wonders what he is going to do now, what he is doing now, what he is supposed to do.

He needs John, needs him more than he has ever admitted to needing anyone or anything before, but John is not here and Sherlock's thoughts are a mess and it is all wrong and unbearable.

It has to be Moriarty, that much he has established. Nobody else would know just where to strike, just how to incapacitate him, how to create the mystery even he cannot solve because the solution is the prerequisite to the process itself. Except there have been no messages, no bragging, no declarations of a new game. No word whatsoever has reached Sherlock. No threats of the pain and hardship he is about to go through.

Sherlock cannot recall ever being more terrified.

It is not logical, of course, none of this is, but then things involving John are rarely logical. If everything went by logic John would be here, wearing one of those endless jumpers of his, and Sherlock would be concentrating on an actual case or maybe complaining about his boredom. John would lecture him about being so careless and then try to force him to eat, and then pester him about sleeping, and maybe sooner or later Sherlock actually would sleep just to make him shut up about it.

It has been three days now since he last slept. Three days since he woke up to find the apartment strangely empty, strangely quiet, strangely devoid of a doctor. Three days since he has managed to eat, to focus, to think logically.

He has allowed himself a weakness, and now someone is exploiting it, and Sherlock hates himself for it.

It doesn't make any sense, of course. There is no reason why he would care for John so much, why this would shake him so much, why he would be left so incapable of normal action. Oh, he knows he has grown fond of his flat mate and friend, knows that despite his claims he isn't quite as devoid of human feelings as he would like to. Knows that John is different from anyone, everyone else. What he doesn't know is why.

If he didn't know better he might make theories. If he were observing his own actions from the outside, his panic and fear and the ever-growing burn to see John safe and sound and home again, he would make deductions about his own feelings that are ridiculous at best when viewed from the inside. John is a companion, an ally, but therein lie the boundaries of their relationship. If he were anyone else his mind would trick itself into thinking it detects affection, jealousy, even possessiveness in the way he acts around John, the way he treats John's girlfriends and keeps him away from them. Sometimes, Sherlock may admit to himself, on purpose. He doesn't want to sleep with John, though, doesn't ever look at him and feel lust or other such unnecessary things, and it's all for the better that way because John doesn't like men and Sherlock doesn't like men or women and it would just be all too complicated anyway.

Except now John is missing and he is in pain, as though a part of his own body had been carved out and hidden from him, except unlike any physical pain this leaves his thoughts muddled and his logic wanting. He feels like a lovesick schoolboy except he never was one, and he certainly isn't one now, and whatever everyone may whisper about them the only reason he'd like to draw John into his arms is so he could check his pulse and breathing and lack of wounds.

Oh, heavens, let John still have a pulse and breath.

The plea is illogical, of course, and largely unscientific, and when the door opens Sherlock is glaring at the ceiling because glaring at himself would require finding a mirror and he frankly doesn't want to see his own face right now. The face of the one who lost John.

He knows without looking that it is Harry, hears it from the almost staggering steps except not, and besides it is two hours too early for Lestrade to be marching in with no leads and no clues and there isn't anyone else Mrs. Hudson would let in right now. Sherlock doesn't look at her, doesn't need to look to know of the faint flush on her cheeks and the smell of alcohol, doesn't need proof to deduce that her eyes are bloodshot from the crying as much as the drinking.

"I did not expect you until tonight," he murmurs, closing his eyes as Harry's presence draws closer. "You're impatient."

"My brother is missing, you arsehole." Her voice is tight, and Sherlock doesn't take the insult. He has been calling himself far worse names throughout the last couple days. He deserves it, for failing to solve this most important mystery of all. "Of course I am impatient."

"Yet your coming here does not help things along in any manner." Not that he doesn't know why she has come. "I am working on the case. It may not look like it, but I am working on it." As much as his mind allows him to. It is most upsetting, being so at the mercy of his own undecipherable emotions.

"You know why I'm here." It's not an accusation, more of a dejected resignation. Her voice is almost at the point of cracking. She might cry, except her tears have run dry long since. "You just want me to say it."

"Oh, heavens, no. Waiting for you to babble about your pointless little threats would be a waste of both of our time." Waste of John's time. Time that might be already running out. "You're here to threaten me, Harriet Watson. Tell me how much you will hurt me if I fail to relocate your brother. How you will use your meagre resources to the best of your abilities to make my life insufferable, should I not succeed."

"You're wrong."

That is enough to make Sherlock crack one eye open, peering at her. Apparently John isn't the only Watson capable of surprising him. "Wrong?" he echoes. "How so, pray tell?"

"I'm not here to threaten you." Despite her shaking hands her voice is surprisingly calm. "Because, Sherlock Holmes, I don't need to do so. I don't need to tell you how much pain and suffering and guilt I will put you through if you don't bring John home." She sniffles, an oddly desperate sound that echoes the trails of tears on her face. She has been crying, and not long before she arrived. That might explain the early arrival. Built-up emotions could simply not wait any longer.

"And why is that?" he asks, because he needs to know, needs to focus on something, anything but his fears and uncertainties.

"Because if you don't get John back, you will do all that yourself."

He opens his mouth to protest, but then closes it as he realises his protests are really quite few and not well articulated. He blames the lack of tea and sleep and his sounding board, John always was useful for bouncing theories off of even if his actual input was sometimes less than satisfactory, and now that he isn't here Sherlock can't even think. She is wrong, of course, utterly wrong and mistaken, except for the part where she isn't and Sherlock knows she can see it in his exhausted eyes.

"I need clues," he murmurs. "Traces. Leads. Anything I can grasp on. I can't deduce anything from thin air." That is another reason to suspect Moriarty. Nobody else could have pulled this off quite as seamlessly, as effortlessly, leaving him grasping at nothing. "There has been no contact for ransom or threats or hostage negotiations. There has been nothing." Nothing but the morning John wasn't home and didn't come back again and nobody had heard from him since. His phone could have been traced except he left it home, why he left it home Sherlock doesn't know, doesn't want to think that even Moriarty could arrange for John to have been dragged out of his own bed without Sherlock noticing anything amiss.

"There has to be something," she says, her voice echoing the desperation Sherlock doesn't want to admit he feels. "He is my brother. You need to get him back."

"And he is my blogger." Friend. Confidante. The only one he would admit to caring about, though only under duress. His something else, if his deductions about his traitorous heart could be trusted, except right now he wouldn't trust himself to deduce the time of the day with a clock and a window.

Wait. Blog. Maybe that is it. Maybe John hadn't been kidnapped, maybe he had gone somewhere, maybe that explains the lack of signs of struggle and the forgotten phone. His blog might hold some clues, or his laptop, or just about anything.

Sherlock is almost feverish as he lunges for John's laptop, quickly going through the files and dismissing them all as uninteresting, not even registering as Mrs. Hudson arrives and takes Harry away from distracting him. He then attacks the blog. The public parts hold little of interest to him, not even any ciphers or hidden messages that his eyes would spot. The password is easy to come up with, and apparently John thinks so too, because when he logs in a new entry appears at the top of the page, set invisible to anyone who isn't signed in as the owner of the blog.

"Stop snooping, Sherlock," the entry tells him, and he can almost hear it in John's voice, almost but not quite. There are still no clues but it calms him down a little, allows him to focus just for a second, to think.

Think. Think. If there is no way to find John, he has to find those who have John. The lack of any threats or demands means that it's John's absence that matters. If it is Moriarty, he has seen how Sherlock acts when John is in danger. Has seen his weakness. How foolish of him.

He is on his feet soon, texting Lestrade to look into any utterly incomprehensible crimes in London within the past couple of days, anything that would stump the normal police. It's not easy to think even as he pulls on his usual coat, not easy to focus on anything but the quite distinct lack of another set of footsteps at his side, but he forces himself to do so. Whoever took John did it so he could not uncover whatever it was they wanted to hide from him. Which meant that this was exactly what he had to find before he could bring John home.

The game is on. He cannot afford to lose.

It's still two more days before he actually has John back, two long and torturous days no matter how he tries to distract himself, to focus on the investigation, on getting John back. But finally it's over and the mystery has been solved and John is right there, right in front of him, hurt and weak and fragile but inexplicably and exhilaratingly alive.

Sherlock has bruises by then, too, bruises and a sprained wrist and a cut to his cheek that requires stitches and may or may not scar, but he cares little for himself at this point. The only thing he cares about is lying in the hospital bed, all he cares about is right within reach, weak and beaten and malnourished but finally safe and back.

Nobody else is there anymore, everyone dispersed about to get some rest or to celebrate or whatever it is they want to do. Sherlock neglects to join them and nobody tries to persuade him otherwise. He sits beside John's bed, ever vigilant in the room he was first told only close family would be allowed in, he has to deduce that Mycroft has his hands in this and though Sherlock would never stoop so low as to actually thank him he might not think too badly of his brother just for today.

Mycroft can wait, though, and so can Lestrade, and everyone else can wait or just sod off for good for all that Sherlock cares. His focus is on John, on his precious blogger who is really just too much trouble. Sherlock listens to him breathe, reaches out to touch his wrist for the pulse, and though they're weak they're there and for the moment it's almost enough.

"You make me illogical," he murmurs, low enough that John might not hear even if he were awake, and it wouldn't matter anyway because he is sure that John knows. John always knows the strangest of things, the precise details Sherlock wants to keep from him, as brilliant in many was as he is in others.

By that same token John would never hear him, not those words, not the precise form of articulation though when it comes to the sentiment he might be even more talented. John would hear the words he could never say, could never whisper even in the depths of his mind, because none of it makes sense and it just isn't right, and it's all John's fault anyway and really he should be ashamed.

Except right now John doesn't hear anything, and Sherlock has to wait until John is all better so he can avoid saying those words again, avoid stating what he has only just deduced but John must have known long since in that strange way John always knows what Sherlock misses. John will wake up, though, he will recover and he will wake up and above all he is back at last, and Sherlock has never felt such an overwhelming wave of relief before as when he leans back in the chair.

He falls asleep soon, exhaustion winning over discomfort in the chair that is anything but welcoming, and in his dreams his thoughts are clear and concise and running a thousand miles a minute and John is shaking his head while he prepares tea for the two of them.

He can figure out the details later.


End file.
